DOCSLIB.ORG

'Tribute System': Broadening the Conceptual Horizon of Historical

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
'Tribute System': Broadening the Conceptual Horizon of Historical Chinese Journal of International Politics, Vol. 2, 2009, 545–574 doi:10.1093/cjip/pop010 Rethinking the ‘Tribute System’: Broadening the Conceptual Horizon of Historical East Asian Politicsy Zhang Feng* A notable feature of the study of historical East Asian politics is its absence of rigorous systemic theories explaining relationships between imperial China and its neighbours and how they worked. Long pre-eminent in this field is the idea of the ‘tribute system’ and its central importance to organiz- ing our thinking about historical East Asian politics. But what is the ‘tribute system’ as it is used by these various scholars? How useful are their tribute- system perspectives and models in shedding light on historical East Asian politics? In this article I critically evaluate the venerable literature on the ‘tribute system’ in an attempt to clarify the concepts and broaden the main themes of traditional China’s foreign relations and the larger political dynamics between China and its neighbours. I write from a political-science perspective, but engage extensively in predominantly historical scholarship on the subject. Except for a few notable exceptions in recent years, the ‘international relations’ of historical East Asia has been almost exclusively an historian’s domain. East Asian diplomatic history saw a remarkable period of intellec- tual creativity from the 1930s to the 1960s, thanks chiefly to the pioneering y For helpful comments and suggestions the author wishes to thank Chen Jian, Prasenjit Duara, Paul Evans, Wang Gungwu, Lin Chun, Tang Shiping, Brantly Womack, Zheng Yongnian, an anonymous reviewer, and the editors of this journal. The author extends particular thanks to Christopher R. Hughes and Victoria Hui for their advice and support. The article was first presented in an international conference in honour of Professor Wang Gungwu’s scholarship held in June 2009, Singapore. The author wishes to thank confer- ence participants for their reactions. Zhang Feng is Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations, Tsinghua University. * Corresponding author. Email: [email protected] ß The Author 2009. 546 Zhang Feng work of John King Fairbank,1 after which historians’ interest waned, to the extent that the area became ‘unfashionable and underpopulated’.2 Research during the 30-year ‘classic era’ on China’s foreign relations produced impor- tant insights and laid foundations for understanding historical East Asian politics. But analytical confusion and empirical omissions are evident in this body of research. In the 1980s, historians started re-examining Fairbank’s ‘tribute system’ and ‘Chinese world order’ frameworks, exposing hidden assumptions and bringing to light new historical evidence that contradicts existing interpretations. But although this research critiques Fairbank, it does not in general try to replace his tribute system model with any new explanatory frameworks. Political scientists, and particularly international relations (IR) scholars, should take a keen interest in historical East Asian politics. It is just as fertile a field for theoretical innovations as European history has been for developing modern IR theories. But although its theory-building potential is recognized, relatively few scholars have entered the field armed with in- depth historical and theoretical research. Any research that has been carried out on the subject often relies on secondary sources, which impedes analyt- ical and theoretical innovations in the first place.3 The few works that have consciously tried to exploit historical Asia for theory development have produced fresh approaches and insights. Two of the most innovative are Iain Johnston’s Cultural Realism and Victoria Hui’s War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe.4 But although both books have engendered important perspectives on China’s strategic culture and the state formation process in ancient China, neither says much about the tribute system itself. And apart from Brantly Womack’s recent work,5 1 These include J. K. Fairbank and S. Y. Teng, ‘On the Ch’ing Tributary System’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1941, pp. 135–246; J. K. Fairbank, ‘Tributary Trade and China’s Relations with the West’, The Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1942, pp. 129–49; J. K. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast: The Opening of the Treaty Ports, 1842–1854 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953), esp. chapter 2; and J. K. Fairbank, ed., The Chinese World Order: Traditional China’s Foreign Relations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968), esp. chapter 1. 2 John E. Wills, Jr., ‘Tribute, Defensiveness, and Dependency: Uses and Limits of Some Basic Ideas About Mid-Qing Dynasty Foreign Relations’, American Neptune, Vol. 48, 1988, pp. 225–9, at p. 229. Holding a similar view is Michael Hunt, who wrote in the early 1980s that ‘little fresh work [on historical Chinese foreign relations] is appearing and ...the pool of specialists in the field has not been sustained.’ Michael H. Hunt, ‘Chinese Foreign Relations in Historical Perspective,’ in Harry Harding, ed., China’s Foreign Relations in the 1980s (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 1–42, at p. 37, fn. 14. 3 See, for example, Michael D. Swaine and Ashley J. Tellis, Interpreting China’s Grand Strategy: Past, Present, and Future (Santa Monica: RAND, 2000). 4 Alastair Iain Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); Victoria Tin-bor Hui, War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 5 Brantly Womack, China and Vietnam: the Politics of Asymmetry (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Chinese Journal of International Politics, Vol. 2, 2009, 545–574 The Tribute System 547 virtually no IR scholarship systematically examines the tribute system either. The widespread ‘sinocentric’ bias in both the existing historical and IR scholarship—evident in the tendency to focus on China’s foreign relations to the exclusion of its dealings with other polities in the region—compounds this lack of attention. Many Chinese IR scholars, on the other hand, find the ‘tribute system’ fascinating. Some think of it as a wellspring for developing a ‘Chinese school of international relations’.6 This could be true, but we need first to know the origins and evolution of the idea of the ‘tribute system’, its main char- acteristics as an historical institution, and the strengths and weaknesses of its existing models before we can use the ‘tribute system’ in Chinese theories. Certain scholars take the ‘tribute system’ as a given, even unchanging, his- torical entity, and regard as unproblematic Fairbank’s interpretations of it. I argue that Fairbank’s thesis is not an adequate basis for developing new theories. More important, rather than using the ‘tribute system’ as a concept through which to develop Chinese theories, we might first think about how to develop theories of whatever kind that can explain the ‘tribute system’ as an historical institution. The aim of this article is more modest. It does not try to produce a new theoretical framework to explain historical East Asian politics. New theories are, after all, the product of cumulative research over time. But I do raise an alternative framework towards the end of the article that explains certain puzzles in the tributary politics between China and its neighbours. My main purpose, however, is to focus on the ‘tribute system’ concept itself, and to assess the analytical utility of the models and perspectives that this concept has generated for understanding of certain features of historical East Asian politics. There are three interrelated ways in which the ‘tribute system’ concept has been used in the relevant literature. I discuss each in turn, but focus on Fairbank’s interpretive model as that is the most influential in establishing the tribute system paradigm in the study of East Asian diplomatic history.7 6 Qin Yaqing, ‘Quanqiu shiye zhong de guoji zhixu’ (‘International Order in a Global View’) in Qin Yaqing, ed., Zhongguo xuezhe kan shijie: guoji zhixu juan (World Politics—Views from China: International Order) (Beijing: Xin shijie chubanshe, 2007), pp. 11–25; and Qin Yaqing, ‘A Chinese School of International Relations Theory: Possibility and Inevitability’, Shijie jingji yu zhengzhi (World Economics and Politics), No. 3, 2006, pp. 7–13. 7 By the ‘tribute system paradigm’ I mean a research tradition that has the ‘tribute system’ as the central organizing concept for conceptual and empirical analysis. Chinese Journal of International Politics, Vol. 2, 2009, 545–574 548 Zhang Feng I build on the criticism this model has incurred over the years8 and present a systematic evaluation. That many inadequacies have been found should not be surprising, as Fairbank was writing under the political and social contexts of the 1930s.9 But criticism should have positive payoffs. I use this evalua- tion of Fairbank’s foundational research on the tribute system as an heur- istic device through which to shed light on possible new conceptualizations of historical East Asian politics. Fairbank believed that ‘every major subject has to be redone for each generation’,10 and was disappointed that nobody had consciously tried to refine or even dismantle his research program.11 Fifty years after the publication of his major works, the time seems ripe for evaluation. My general
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Locating Religion and Secularity in East Asia Through Global Processes: Early Modern Jesuit Religious Encounters
    religions Article Locating Religion and Secularity in East Asia Through Global Processes: Early Modern Jesuit Religious Encounters Jose Casanova Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, Georgetown University, 3007 M St, NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20007, USA; [email protected] Received: 25 September 2018; Accepted: 23 October 2018; Published: 7 November 2018 Abstract: The central premise of this paper is that in order to understand the social construction of religion and secularity in East Asia today we need to take a long durée historical approach, which takes into account the colonial encounters between the Christian West and East Asia during three different and distinct phases of globalization. While most of the recent scholarly work on the globalization of the categories of religion and secularity focuses on the second Western hegemonic phase of globalization, this essay focuses on the early modern phase of globalization before Western hegemony. Keywords: globalization; East Asia; Western hegemony; Jesuits; religion; religiosity; secularity The central premise of this paper is that in order to understand the social construction of religion and secularity in East Asia today we need to take a long durée historical approach, which takes into account the colonial encounters between the Christian West and East Asia during three different and distinct phases of globalization.1 The first phase of globalization, before Western hegemony, which in East Asia lasted from the mid-sixteenth-century to the late eighteenth-century, was shaped primarily by the encounters between the Jesuits and other Catholic religious orders and the religions and cultures of East Asia. Although the categories of religion and secularity had not yet acquired a stable and identifiable form during this early modern phase, those early modern colonial encounters, which are the main focus of this paper, played a significant role in the emergence of the categories in the West in the transition from the first to the second phase of globalization.
    [Show full text]
  • Right Concept, Wrong Country: Tianming and Tianxia in International Relations Originally Published At
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Sydney eScholarship Right Concept, Wrong Country: Tianming and Tianxia in International Relations Originally published at: http://www.asianreviewofbooks.com/pages/?ID=2500 by Salvatore Babones 14 January 2016 The Mandate of Heaven and The Great Ming Code (new ed.) Jiang Yonglin University of Washington Press, September 2015 Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power (new ed.) Yan Xuetong, Daniel A. Bell (ed), Sun Zhe (ed), Edmund Ryden (trans) Princeton University Press, August 2013 The Tianxia System: An Introduction to the Philosophy of World Institution (in Chinese) Zhao Tingyang China Renmin University Press, 2011 A rising “Chinese School” of international relations may have more to say about the United States than about China itself. Today’s China is a country of great contradictions—and great ironies. In the political sphere, the combined net worth the members of its National “People’s” Congress is over US$90 billion. In the economic sphere, nearly all of the major companies traded on the Shanghai stock exchange are majority owned by the government. And in the cultural sphere, almost every city in this Communist- ruled country has a brand new statue of Confucius. Confucius is back. Casual observers of China may not know that Confucius had ever left. But Mao identified Confucianism with “imperialism and the feudal class”. During the Cultural Revolution students were told to reject the Four Olds: old culture, old customs, old habits, and old ideas. And “old” in China means Confucius. Ancient books were burned.
    [Show full text]
  • Royal Power, Law and Justice in Ancient Macedonia Joseph Roisman
    Royal Power, Law and Justice in Ancient Macedonia Joseph Roisman In his speech On the Crown Demosthenes often lionizes himself by suggesting that his actions and policy required him to overcome insurmountable obstacles. Thus he contrasts Athens’ weakness around 346 B.C.E. with Macedonia’s strength, and Philip’s II unlimited power with the more constrained and cumbersome decision-making process at home, before asserting that in spite of these difficulties he succeeded in forging later a large Greek coalition to confront Philip in the battle of Chaeronea (Dem.18.234–37). [F]irst, he (Philip) ruled in his own person as full sovereign over subservient people, which is the most important factor of all in waging war . he was flush with money, and he did whatever he wished. He did not announce his intentions in official decrees, did not deliberate in public, was not hauled into the courts by sycophants, was not prosecuted for moving illegal proposals, was not accountable to anyone. In short, he was ruler, commander, in control of everything.1 For his depiction of Philip’s authority Demosthenes looks less to Macedonia than to Athens, because what makes the king powerful in his speech is his freedom from democratic checks. Nevertheless, his observations on the Macedonian royal power is more informative and helpful than Aristotle’s references to it in his Politics, though modern historians tend to privilege the philosopher for what he says or even does not say on the subject. Aristotle’s seldom mentions Macedonian kings, and when he does it is for limited, exemplary purposes, lumping them with other kings who came to power through benefaction and public service, or who were assassinated by men they had insulted.2 Moreover, according to Aristotle, the extreme of tyranny is distinguished from ideal kingship (pambasilea) by the fact that tyranny is a government that is not called to account.
    [Show full text]
  • Tribute, Trade and Regional Hierarchy in Pre-Colonial East Asia
    Tribute, Trade and Regional Hierarchy in Pre-Colonial East Asia Min Shu Waseda University 2019/10/15 1 2019/10/15 2 Outline of the Lecture • Confucianism and its impact on East Asia • The China-centered tribute system • Sino-Japanese interaction in the pre-colonial era • Tribute and Trade between China and Southeast Asia • Chosŏn and Ryukyu facing the Ming-Qing transition • The tribute system: historical impact and contemporary relevance 2019/10/15 3 Confucianism and its Impact on East Asia • Confucius (551–479 BC) • Confucian teaching • Humanism • Ethical teaching • Hierarchical social order • The development of Confucianism • Classic Confucianism • Neo-Confucianism • Confucianism in Korea, Japan, Taiwan… 2019/10/15 4 Confucianism and its Impact on East Asia • The formation of a Confucian world in East Asia • China-centered tributary system • Active learning and adoption in Korea, Japan and Vietnam • Ritual-based diplomatic relationship • Confucian hierarchy and international relations in traditional East Asia • A form of hierarchical legitimacy that put simultaneous emphasis on loyal followers and compassionate leaders • Peaceful times: vindicating regional hierarchy and ceremonial exchanges between neighboring countries • War times: justifying aggressive actions (military campaigns) against disobedient followers and amoral leaders 2019/10/15 5 The China-Centered Tribute System • Foreign relations of imperial China • Hierarchical relationship between China and the rest • China as the Middle Kingdom • Confucianism and the moral foundation
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Chinese Pragmatic Nationalism and Its Foreign Policy Implications
    1 Chinese Pragmatic Nationalism and Its Foreign Policy Implications Suisheng Zhao Graduate School of International Studies University of Denver Prepared for delivery at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, August 28-31, 2008 2 Introduction During the standoff over the US spy plane that collided with a Chinese jetfighter and landed on Hainan Island, off China’s coast, in 2001, Washington Post used the headline “New Nationalism Drives Beijing” for front-page story.1 Such a warning reflects that rising nationalism in China has fed the roiling sense of anxiety in many political capitals of Asian and Western countries about if a virulent nationalism has emerged from China's "century of shame and humiliation" to make China’s rise less peaceful and if the Chinese government has exploited nationalist sentiments to gain leverage in international affairs or if nationalism has driven Chinese foreign policy toward a more irrational and inflexible direction? This political concern is reflected also among scholars. Although some scholars have been cautious in exploring the limits of Chinese nationalism and whether Chinese nationalism is affirmative, assertive, or aggressive,2 some others have found a reckless nationalism driven by China's traditional sinocentrism and contemporary aspirations for great power status.3 For example, Peter Gries labels the rising nationalism in China as a new nationalism and argues that an emotionally popular nationalism empowered by “victim narratives” is “beginning to influence the making of Chinese foreign policy.”4 His argument echoes an earlier warning by Richard Bernstein and Ross Munro, "Driven by nationalist sentiment, a yearning to redeem the humiliations of the past, and the simple urge for international power, China is seeking to replace the United States as the dominant power in Asia."5 It is indeed not difficult to find evidences to support these warnings.
    [Show full text]
  • The Nature and Linkages of China's Tributary System Under the Ming
    Working Papers of the Global Economic History Network (GEHN) No. 21/06 The Nature and Linkages of China’s Tributary System under the Ming and Qing Dynasties Giovanni Andornino © Giovanni Andornino Department of Economic History London School of Economics March 2006 This paper was originally written and submitted as a dissertation in partial fulfilment of the MSc Global History (LSE), and was a winner of the McKenzie prize (2004-05) awarded for outstanding performance in MSc/MA/MPhil/PhD examinations. For more information about the participants and activities of GEHN, go to http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/economicHistory/GEHN/Default.htm Department of Economic History London School of Economics Houghton Street London, WC2A 2AE Tel: +44 (0) 20 7955 7860 Fax: +44 (0) 20 7955 7730 The Nature And Linkages Of China’s Tributary System Under The Ming And Qing Dynasties Giovanni Andornino Abstract. The current landscape of Global History literature appears dominated by a rather asymmetrical dichotomy between Eurocentric analyses of the cumulative emergence of the West and global history which reduces the significance of this transition by blending it into very long-term perspectives. This ‘synecdoche syndrome’ – whereby a part and the whole are often equated and compared – belies the real nature of human history, which, up to the XIX century at least, was grounded in the presence of a plurality of coexisting world-systems. Each of these systems revolved around a multilayered cultural, economic and political relationship between centre(s) and peripheries. It is through both a synchronic and diachronic comparative study of such systems that the theory of structural systemic transformations may be refined.
    [Show full text]
  • The Mandala Culture of Anarchy: the Pre-Colonial Southeast Asian International Society
    The Mandala Culture of Anarchy: The Pre-Colonial Southeast Asian International Society Pandu Utama Manggala Australian National University, Australia Abstract Throughout the years, study on pre-colonial Southeast Asian international relations has not garnered major attention because it had long been seen as an integral part of the China- centred tribute system. There is a need to provide greater understanding of the uniqueness of the international system as different regions have different ontologies to comprehend its dynamics and structures. This paper contributes to the pre-colonial Southeast Asian literature by examining the interplay that had existed between pre-colonial Southeast Asian empires and the hierarchical East Asian international society, in particular during the 13th- 16th Century. The paper argues that Southeast Asian international relations in pre-colonial time were characterized by complex political structures with the influence of Mandala values. In that structural context, the Majapahit Empire, one of the biggest empires at that time had its own constitutional structures of an international society, albeit still sought close relations with China. Keywords: Pre-Colonial History, Southeast Asia, Mandala, Tributary System Introduction Southeast Asian countries were far from peaceful and stable under the tribute Throughout the years, study on pre- system. Fierce competition for survival and colonial Southeast Asian international domination had characterized the balance relations has not garnered major attention of power politics throughout the pre- because it had long been seen as an integral colonial era (Shu 2012b, p. 46). part of the China-centred tribute system. For that reason, there is a need to Moreover, Southeast Asia has often been provide greater understanding of the regarded as a political backwater uniqueness of the international system as compared to East Asia because Southeast different regions have different ontologies Asia as a region is seen as relatively to comprehend its dynamics and structures.
    [Show full text]
  • From Eurocentrism to Sinocentrism: the Case of Disposal Constructions in Sinitic Languages
    From Eurocentrism to Sinocentrism: The case of disposal constructions in Sinitic languages Hilary Chappell 1. Introduction 1.1. The issue Although China has a long tradition in the compilation of rhyme dictionar- ies and lexica, it did not develop its own tradition for writing grammars until relatively late.1 In fact, the majority of early grammars on Chinese dialects, which begin to appear in the 17th century, were written by Europe- ans in collaboration with native speakers. For example, the Arte de la len- gua Chiõ Chiu [Grammar of the Chiõ Chiu language] (1620) appears to be one of the earliest grammars of any Sinitic language, representing a koine of urban Southern Min dialects, as spoken at that time (Chappell 2000).2 It was composed by Melchior de Mançano in Manila to assist the Domini- cans’ work of proselytizing to the community of Chinese Sangley traders from southern Fujian. Another major grammar, similarly written by a Do- minican scholar, Francisco Varo, is the Arte de le lengua mandarina [Grammar of the Mandarin language], completed in 1682 while he was living in Funing, and later posthumously published in 1703 in Canton.3 Spanish missionaries, particularly the Dominicans, played a signifi- cant role in Chinese linguistic history as the first to record the grammar and lexicon of vernaculars, create romanization systems and promote the use of the demotic or specially created dialect characters. This is discussed in more detail in van der Loon (1966, 1967). The model they used was the (at that time) famous Latin grammar of Elio Antonio de Nebrija (1444–1522), Introductiones Latinae (1481), and possibly the earliest grammar of a Ro- mance language, Grammatica de la Lengua Castellana (1492) by the same scholar, although according to Peyraube (2001), the reprinted version was not available prior to the 18th century.
    [Show full text]
  • Current Position 2013- Editor-In-Chief, the Asan Forum (
    CURRICULUM VITAE (2019) Gilbert Rozman ____________________________________________________________________________________ Home Address: 6801Whittier Blvd. Bethesda, MD 20817 Telephone: cell=609 560-0547 E-mail: [email protected] EDUCATION 1961-63, ‘64-‘65 Carleton College; Northfield, MN (MAjor: ChineSe and RuSSian StudieS) 1963-64 Princeton University (CriticAl LAnguAges Program in Chinese And Russian Studies) 1965-70 Princeton University (Sociology) Ph.D AwArded June 1971 INTENSIVE LANGUAGE PROGRAMS HarvArd UniverSity (Summer 1963, Beginning ChineSe) StAnford UniverSity (Summer 1964, ClASSicAl ChineSe) IndianA University (summer 1965, Russian LAnguAge Study Tour) UniverSity of MinneSota (Summer 1966, Third-YeAr JApAneSe) YonSei UniverSity (fAll 2000, IntermediAte KoreAn, tutoriAlS) POSITIONS at Princeton University 1970- Instructor, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor 1979- ProfeSSor 1992- MuSgrAve ProfeSSor of Sociology 2013- EmerituS MuSgrAve ProfeSSor of Sociology Current Position 2013- Editor-in-chief, The Asan Forum (www.theASAnforum.org) RESEARCH AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS Alfred P. SloAn FoundAtion ScholArShip (1961-65) Woodrow WilSon NAtionAl Fellowship (1965-66) Foreign AreA FellowShip, SociAl Science ReSeArch Council (1968-70) InternAtionAl ReseArch And ExchAnges BoArd Fellowship (1972) NAtionAl Endowment of the HumAnitieS Summer Fellowship (1975) NAtionAl Science Foundation and the NAtionAl Endowment of the HumAnitieS Project Support (1976-79) Guggenheim Fellowship (1979-80) InternAtionAl Post-DoctorAl ReSeArch, SociAl
    [Show full text]
  • Spread of Civilizations in East Asia: Tang & Song Dynasties
    Spread of Civilizations in East Asia: Tang & Song Dynasties 500CE-1603CE NOTES Two Golden Ages After the Han dynasty (Wudi, Silk Road) collapsed in 220CE, China remained a divided land for about 400 years. During this period of division, China managed to escape the grim world that Western Europe was experiencing (plague, economic failures, etc.). Farm production in China expanded and technology slowly improved. Buddhism spread, while learning and the arts continued. Even Chinese cities survived despite invaders in the North, as the invaders would often adopt Chinese civilization rather than demolish it. Meanwhile, in the South, various Chinese dynasties rose and fell. THE TANG DYNASTY The first two Tang emperors were father (Li Yuan) and son (Li Shimin), but the son was the main force behind the dynasty. After time, Li Shimin, compelled his aging father to step down and took the throne himself, taking the name Tang Taizong. He was a brilliant general, government reformer, famous historian, and master of the calligraphy brush. He would eventually become the most admired of all Chinese emperors. The Tang Dynasty, under the leadership of Tang Taizong, carried empire building to greater heights, conquering territories deep into Central Asia, as far as present-day Afghanistan. Chinese armies forced neighboring lands of Vietnam, Tibet, and Korea to become tributary states. A tributary state is an independent ​ ​ state that has to acknowledge the supremacy of another state and pay tribute to its ruler. Therefore, while these states remained independent, their rulers had to acknowledge Chinese supremacy and send regular tribute to the Tang emperor.
    [Show full text]
  • Changing Views of Tianxia in Pre-Imperial Discourse*
    Changing views of tianxia in pre-imperial discourse* Yuri Pines (Jerusalem) Half a century ago Joseph Levenson defined the traditional concept of tianxia 天下 (“world”, “All under Heaven”) as referring primarily to a cultural realm, being “a regime of value”, as opposed to a political unit, guo 國, “a state”.1 The implication is clear: tianxia was a supra-political unit, larger than the manageable Zhongguo 中國, “the Central States”, i.e. the Chinese empire. Authors of modern Chinese dictionaries, such as Cihai 辭海 or Hanyu da cidian 漢語大詞典, disagree with Levenson: they suggest that tianxia was a political unit basically identical with Zhongguo, while its meaning as “the larger world” was secondary. The difference is more than purely semantic; for Levenson, at least, the distinction between tianxia and guo had far-reaching implications on China’s problematic entrance into the modern world of nation-states.2 Levenson’s study relied primarily on late imperial discourse. In this article I will complement his research by tracing the origins of the term tianxia and its earliest usage. I shall try to verify first whether Levenson’s juxtaposition of cultural and political meanings of this term is traceable to pre- imperial texts, and second, what were the limits of pre-imperial tianxia and whether or not it was confined to the Central States, i.e. the Zhou 周 realm. A preliminary warning which has to be made is that unlike many other terms of political and philosophical discourse, the precise meaning of the term tianxia was never scrutinized by pre-imperial statesmen and thinkers, and its usage remained quite loose, reminiscent of the modern usage of such terms as “nation”, “humanity” or “the world” by politicians and journalists, rather than the rigid lexi- con of philosophical discourse.3 A single text, and sometimes a single passage, could refer to tianxia in two or more different, even contradictory, ways.
    [Show full text]
  • Non-Muslim Integration Into the Early Islamic Caliphate Through the Use of Surrender Agreements
    University of Arkansas, Fayetteville ScholarWorks@UARK History Undergraduate Honors Theses History 5-2020 Non-Muslim Integration Into the Early Islamic Caliphate Through the Use of Surrender Agreements Rachel Hutchings Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uark.edu/histuht Part of the History of Religion Commons, Islamic World and Near East History Commons, and the Medieval History Commons Citation Hutchings, R. (2020). Non-Muslim Integration Into the Early Islamic Caliphate Through the Use of Surrender Agreements. History Undergraduate Honors Theses Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/histuht/6 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the History at ScholarWorks@UARK. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Undergraduate Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UARK. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Non-Muslim Integration Into the Early Islamic Caliphate Through the Use of Surrender Agreements An Honors Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of Honors Studies in History By Rachel Hutchings Spring 2020 History J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences The University of Arkansas 1 Acknowledgments: For my family and the University of Arkansas Honors College 2 Table of Content Introduction…………………………………….………………………………...3 Historiography……………………………………….…………………………...6 Surrender Agreements…………………………………….…………….………10 The Evolution of Surrender Agreements………………………………….…….29 Conclusion……………………………………………………….….….…...…..35 Bibliography…………………………………………………………...………..40 3 Introduction Beginning with Muhammad’s forceful consolidation of Arabia in 631 CE, the Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates completed a series of conquests that would later become a hallmark of the early Islamic empire. Following the Prophet’s death, the Rashidun Caliphate (632-661) engulfed the Levant in the north, North Africa from Egypt to Tunisia in the west, and the Iranian plateau in the east.
    [Show full text]